Frost heaving

[1][2] Differential frost heaving can crack road surfaces—contributing to springtime pothole formation—and damage building foundations.

[a][5][6][7][8] By 1930, Stephen Taber, head of the Department of Geology at the University of South Carolina, had disproved the hypothesis that frost heaving results from molar volume expansion with freezing of water already present in the soil prior to the onset of subzero temperatures, i.e. with little contribution from the migration of water within the soil.

Taber showed that the vertical displacement of soil in frost heaving could be significantly greater than that due to molar volume expansion.

[9] This excluded molar volume changes as the dominant mechanism for vertical displacement of freezing soil.

His experiments further demonstrated the development of ice lenses inside columns of soil that were frozen by cooling the upper surface only, thereby establishing a temperature gradient.

The presence of frost-susceptible soil with a pore structure that allows capillary flow is essential to supplying water to the ice lenses as they form.

[15] The same intermolecular forces that cause premelting at surfaces contribute to frost heaving at the particle scale on the bottom side of the forming ice lens.

[16] Based on such research, standard tests exist to determine the relative frost and thaw weakening susceptibility of soils used in pavement systems by comparing the heave rate and thawed bearing ratio with values in an established classification system for soils where frost-susceptibility is uncertain.

[21] In Arctic permafrost regions, a related type of ground heaving over hundreds of years can create structures, as high as 60 metres, known as pingos, which are fed by an upwelling of ground water, instead of the capillary action that feeds the growth of frost heaves.

In May 2008 the Mars Phoenix lander touched down on such a polygonal frost-heave landscape and quickly discovered ice a few centimetres below the surface.

Cold-storage buildings and ice rinks that are maintained at sub-freezing temperatures may freeze the soil below their foundations to a depth of tens of meters.

If a refrigerated building's foundation is placed on frost-susceptible soils with a water table within reach of the freezing front, then the floors of such structures may heave, due to the same mechanisms found in nature.